Strange and delicious things can happen when nobody is looking, namely in the large swaths of often-ignored lands filling the planet's Southern Hemisphere.

"Isolation leads to innovation" formed the mantra of Friday afternoon's "Below the Equator" seminar during Tales of the Cocktail 2011 at the Hotel Monteleone in New Orleans. The session, led by celebrity bartenders and mixologists Jacob Briars, Sebastian Reaburn and Duggan McDonnell, formed part of New Orleans' annual Tales of the Cocktail, which runs July 20-24.

Indeed, these cocktail wizards introduced an audience of bartenders, suppliers and other industry professionals to cocktails crafted in places where the species of spirits can be as eccentric as the flora and fauna. Guests experienced spots like Brazil, Peru, Australia, New Zealand and Tasmania through homespun, oddball beverages, many of them brought here by hand due to lack of availability in the U.S.

"It's great to show people something they haven't seen," said Reaburn, ambassador for 666 Pure Tasmanian Vodka.

Audiences sampled a gunpowder-flavored spirit (made with actual gunpowder) formed with peace-pipe weed used by indigenous peoples and fashioned in a New Zealand bedroom. They sipped on a "seriously dark" rum from Fiji and Australia, a gin handmade in western Australia and a honey-forward medicinal vodka made in New Zealand.

The spirits represent the kind of wild, relentless inventions that occur in places where isolation forces people to tap into creative powers and experiment - and craft spirits more out of pure passion than a desire for money, Reaburn said. These experiments often lead to creations that are "serendipitous and really quite wonderful" Reaburn said.

Guests tasted the tropical fruit and sugarcane flavor of spirits popular in Brazil and Peru, gulping drinks largely consumed in those countries (about 98 percent of Brazil's cachaça stays in Brazil; about 95 percent of Peru's pisco stays in that country).

South America exhibits more creativity in its cocktails than outsiders acknowledge, said Briars, a longtime New Zealand bartender who serves as global brand director for Leblon Cachaça of Brazil. Heavy waves of immigration have influenced Brazil's drink options without overpowering the country's instinctive leanings toward fruit-forward cocktails, Briars said.

"If you had fruits like they have in Brazil, you'd be making fruity drinks, too," said Briars, known as the "vodka professor."

The drinks may be innovative, but many are not new. The Southern Hemisphere, South America in particular, is home to some of the world's oldest spirits, Briars said. Brazil started crafting cachaça in 1532. Nicknamed "rum's daddy," cachaça is made from fresh-pressed sugarcane juice instead of the molasses used to make rum. Peru first produced pisco in 1547. Trader Vic of Mai Tai fame started off with "Pisco Punch," using the Peruvian spirit until earthquakes, wars and other international events shut down his supply, said Duggan, who owns Cantina bar in San Francisco.

Audiences even sampled a drink as improbable as the Tasmanian devil, the world's only carnivorous marsupial. The cocktail, called "The Impossible Sazerac" due to its inclusion of vodka, stirred laughs from the crowd. The cocktail uses 666 Pure Tasmanian Vodka, which is distilled in copper pots - the secret to why this vodka can survive the sazerac, Reaburn said.